CARACAS – Psychiatrist and former university chancellor Edmundo Chirinos, who says that President Hugo Chavez was his patient, asked the Venezuelan head of state for a pardon to avoid serving the rest of a 20-year prison sentence for homicide.

“I’ve been detained for more than a year in Yare III (prison), in a cell unusually inadequate for a person of 77, very sick,” wrote Chirinos in an open letter to Chavez and Attorney General Luisa Ortega Diaz.

The well-known psychiatrist and academic, who was also a presidential candidate in the 1988 elections, was sentenced on Sept. 29, 2010, for the July murder of one of his patients, 19-year-old college student Roxana Vargas.

One must wonder what beans el Doctor Chirinos could spill if given the requested pardon and permitted to blab about Chávez’ state of mind. Or, maybe better, why he didn’t off Chavez. In jail, there seems to be little chance of either. Out of jail as well, for that matter.

Still, it could be even more interesting than what Chávez’ cat or former mistress(es) might have to say.

Dan Miller graduated from Yale University in 1963 and from the University of Virginia School of Law in 1966. He retired from the practice of law in Washington, D.C., in 1996 and has lived in a rural area in Panama since 2002.

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1.
Dianna

OK, I have only one question: Is he guilty? Is this a real conviction, or a political one?

He was jailed for the murder and rape of one of his patient. A preposterous norm in the Penal, criminal, Code, ( copied almost in full from the Italian code of 1898)dating from 1926 when the life expectancy was 35 years establish that person over 70 must be held in house arrest. Another norm establishs that after serving 1/3 of the punishment the con has a right to parole. But it has been largely ignored by courts and lawyers alike.
The jail sentence is for 25 years.
BTW: he is lucky to be alive. Women killers are usually raped and killed the same day they enter prison. The authories put them with rapists and killers to get that result on purpose